Having
come to understand that mainstream media are in the business of selling
fried chicken and cars, giving Wall Street head, and stealing bandwidth
from the public’s airwaves, none of us expect them to question anything
afoot in the empire. We quite understand they cannot be wasting profitable
air time on a nation whose collective memory is 30 seconds long. So we
watch them pull their punches and wait for the commercials, which are
their whole point anyway. If, god forbid, you are the pointy-headed type
interested in details, turn on NPR. And if you consider yourself hipper
than the couch taters out here in Budland, go onto the net and visit
Salon.com. Or if you are so worldly and hip that you are a downright
commie, then subscribe to Mother Jones. That’s the way it used to
be.

But now we are
seeing what were once considered the more intelligent and, in some cases,
more principled media such as NPR, Salon and Mother Jones
distancing themselves from meaningful controversy -- pulling the few wimpy
punches they have. (Bullshit controversy, however, is still in fashion.)
We are talking about Mark Crispin Miller’s new book,
Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal
the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them). Miller has become a known
and respected progressive figure, one of the few in-your-face bespectacled
lefty author types with any credibility. But when it comes to promoting
Fooled, the guy can’t even get arrested. No interviews, nothing. In
fact, these days even his cash bounces -- Miller can’t even buy a spot on
National Public Radio for his book. Now you may be saying to yourself:
“Public Radio doesn’t sell advertising.” Which would make you one of those
delusional souls who believe that shameless brand hawking by the oil
companies and the financial establishment on NPR is not advertising. I
mean, after all, ADM and Wal-Mart? NPR has sales people out chasing these
sponsors. They sell these damned announcements. The only difference
between NPR’s “paid sponsorships” and the puke jock shows’ commercial
radio ads is that the NPR folks don’t have a real rate card. Which is
either stupid or brilliant, I’m not sure.

Anyway, when it
comes to NPR and PBS, and especially Philadelphia’s WHYY, Miller can’t buy
a date. As in the past, he attempted to sponsor spots on behalf of his
newest book. And WHYY accepted the sponsorship. But then aaaaaaaaagh!
There came the sweaty excuse-ridden attempts to back out on their end.
Various excuses included that the book was too old (it was out two months)
and that it was a paid political ad (it supports no candidate).
Ultimately, NPR and PBS have pretty much told Miller to go to hell.

It is safe to say
that WHYY and the rest of the public media gang are simply scared to death
of uttering the book’s title on the airwaves. They know that the neocons
will jump up all over their asses claiming liberal bias. Maybe even launch
one of their infamous letter writing campaigns. The Republican game plan
of unrelenting bullshit, that steady grinding away day in day out . . . it
works. They have managed to wear down those media they don’t already
control from the top, make them either doubt themselves or make them
damned afraid of repercussions. We can well imagine what the GOP assault
on public radio and television has created around places like WHYY. Hell,
if they can get Bill Moyer they can get anybody. Right?

WHYY would not
accept Miller’s sponsorship on behalf of Fooled on the grounds that
it was a paid political message. By golly, it was a matter of
principle! That’s what it was! We won’t take just anybody’s money.
Yeah, right. If you’ve ever suffered through a pledge drive you know that
the brass at NPR would put Terry Gross and Nina Totenberg out on the
street as workin’ girls if they thought it would bring in another couple
of hundred. But honestly speaking, the facts are as WHYY claims.
The station does not accept political ads. It only accepts paid
advertisements for commercial products. Which is exactly what the
sponsorship of Miller’s book is.

Then there is that
charge of it being old news. Hell, maybe the evolving corruption of our
voting system is old news in a nation with said 30-second memory. Maybe
the subversion of our government by an organized syndicate is not worthy
of more than a few days media attention. Maybe that’s why the book is not
getting reviewed. But besides treading lightly around the neocon pit
bulls, there is also that nagging issue of denial. To admit that two
national elections were rigged shakes us to the bone.

Right now, between
the Bush junta’s bloody cry for an inquisition or at least universal
surveillance and torture, and the Christian right’s demented
hallucinations of Kofi Annan as the anti-Christ (Honest to god, just look
in the Left Behind books), we live in that bizarro world that often
precedes fascism -- that bizarro world in which every topic imaginable is
politicized, and even not to speak represents taking a political
stand.

Along with the
passive denial of NPR, there is the active denial. We find characters,
like Salon’s Farhad Manjoo, who’ve lit into Fooled Again
with a suspicious vengeance. In a way it is to be expected. Manjoo has
practically made a career of writing in liberal venues that there is no
odor of polecats in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. Sometimes I think
Salon keeps that boy around so the goppers can’t cry bias. Hell, his
first act was jumping Greg Palast for his groundbreaking exposure of the
Republican election fraud in that first crooked election.

At any rate, here’s
a guy, Miller, with all the establishment credentials that NPR just eats
up when they interview Heritage Foundation “experts”. In fact, Mark
Crispin Miller does a helluva job documenting his facts. Certainly as good
as any of the aging Heritage Foundation gasbags NPR is so fond of for
analysis. As in: Well Scott, actually this is not the first president
to be caught pissing off the White House Portico and throwing empty liquor
bottles at the passing public…In 1832 president Andrew Jackson. . .
But for now Mark Crispin Miller can go sit in the corner with the other
non-grata folks like Howard Zinn and Gore Vidal. As one radio host put it,
“Miller is too angry. It doesn’t make for good radio.”

Some listeners feel
that NPR “does the best it can in this best of all possible worlds.
Sometimes they’re still pretty damn good.” True enough. But in these
times, being “sometimes good” is not good enough -- not when the goddam
republic is burning down. They too need to carry water buckets with the
rest of us and quit imitating corporate media. But then, NPR and PBS are
themselves big corporate media. They are big, they are a corporation and
they are media. So much so that they run soppy feel-good material worthy
of the Rush Limbaugh or the Paul Harvey show. Material like “This I
Believe” series. Tell you what I believe. I believe two national elections
were rigged in this country. Millions of others believe the same. Tens of
millions in fact. But most are in denial of what they deeply suspect and
do not want to see verified.

Our national denial
comes easily when everything converges to support it. First we had John
Kerry’s quick concession of the election, lest a fellow Skull ‘n Boner
accuse him of sour grapes. And looking about, none of our neighbors or
colleagues seems worried about it. We are above all a mimicking species.
Then there is the traditional press, from whom we’ve heard scarcely a
chirp. Rather counter intuitively, denial is especially easy for news
reporters who can always fall back on “the facts” and the need for
absolute proof. Proof being that someone is criminally charged with the
very election fraud everyone is afraid to acknowledge because it is the
death knell for any precious notions we’ve ever entertained about our
system -- the one system among all the troubled and grievously offensive
governments on this planet, we have been told all our lives, that “works.”
Acknowledging that it no longer works would mean fixing it, and fixing it
calls for more strength and political will than Americans have ever shown.
In fact, to be honest, when in your lifetime did ordinary Americans ever
rise up together to stamp down or even point out corruption? I dare say
never. It has always been the duty of the press or a few spectacularly
brave individuals to call attention to such things. And on rare occasions
the press has done just that. But this is not one of those occasions. Not
for CBS, PBS or NPR. Especially not for NPR. Given that the Republicans
have them by the nose hairs, it is easier, not to mention far safer, for
everyone to deny that criminals operate within our political system and
have established what amounts to a corporate/political underworld. We can
smell it at every turn, and have seen its very reflection in those exit
poll results.

Big corporate
sponsors do nothing that does not yield a return on investment, nothing
that doesn’t buy some desired result. Thus, denial and distraction are
what those sponsorships from Hewlett Packard and Monsanto really buys. At
the same time the denial is all but spotlighted with the fluff and slop
that replaces real coverage and demonstrates cooperation to the
administration and sponsors. Stuff like “This I Believe.” Or that overt
sop, Marketplace, where happy jock stockbroker types Kai Ryssdal,
and that hyperactive airhead in Texas (I forget his name) play pocket pool
with each other over the day’s market numbers, happily promoting the
liberal capitalist notion that the second law of thermodynamics is false
and that growth and consumption can be infinite in a world of diminishing
resources.

NPR's own ombudsman
admits that NPR, like the Fox and all the rest, skews towards conservative
spokesmen. In fact, NPR so resembles the mainstream ditch these days that
at least two of its major correspondents slipped comfortably enough right
over into Fox News and were openly congratulated for it by fellow NPR
broadcasters.

PBS increasingly depends on the teat of
corporate underwriters. Consequently, we can expect to be force fed even
more of the three tenors, the Lawrence Welk trio of the white middle class
boomer generation. Meanwhile, as NPR whines under the table for scraps
from the big dogs’ plates, the Heritage Foundation spends $30 million a
year priming the info pumps of Fox and the other big guys.

All of which still
leaves those crooked elections lingering as the backdrop to, or perhaps
harbinger of, the 2008 elections, despite the lack of reporting on it.
Reporters may perhaps be bound by a duty to refrain from assumptions. But
I sure as hell ain’t. And I’m assuming that if the Bush junta got away
with it the first time, they will keep right on doing it until somebody
breaks their goddamned legs. People like Katherine Harris, Karl Rove and
Republican Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell haven’t climbed to
the top of the GOP dung heap because of their morals and restraint. They
are big time Republicans precisely because they are willing to steal
chickens and lie to the sheriff.

At some deep
national level we all know, George W. Bush has no right to be farting into
the oval room desk chair. Even the few genuinely moderate Republicans not
driven into hiding by the Brownshirts look sheepish when you bring up
Florida and Ohio. Yet Americans go on pretending that everything is OK.
The people pretend along with the media that George W. Bush belongs in
that chair. Pretend that his is the face of a man capable of deep and
serious thought, that the smirk is not really a smirk and that he really
gives a rat’s ass about those coffins at Dover or those black people in
New Orleans. They pretend that it was not farcical when he told the nation
this week that despite the city being soaked in petro-toxins and defined
mainly by bulldozed piles of rotting timbers, clothing and sewerage,
overturned cars and botulism filled refrigerators, “New Orleans is still a
great place to bring the family and have fun.” They pretend that strange
nationwide spider web of bitter GOP operatives could not possibly have
worked together in Ohio and Florida and heaven only knows where else.
Everything is OK.

As Helen Caldicott
recently put it: “What’s to become of us? Ask any experienced mental
health practitioner what happens to a person who constructs and tries to
maintain a life based on denial of fundamental reality. It can be done for
a while, in spite of occasional outbursts of behavioral oddities (remember
Dr. Strangelove’s disobedient arm that was always popping up in an
embarrassing Nazi salute). But how long can such a pretense be maintained,
even when the pretender is surrounded by the best handlers money can buy?”